Queenbees from Zia Queenbee Co. produce colonies of excellent varied traits. When selecting bees, honey production is our primary concern followed by hygienics, pest and disease resistance, gentleness and longevity. Honey production is a great indicator of a good colony but hygienics and pest monitoring are vital to establishing a colony’s overall lifetime merit.

Zia Queenbee Company of New Mexico and Superior Honey Farms of Michigan are collaborative companies dedicated to producing the highest quality beekeeping products and services through sustainable and conscientious care of their hives and the surrounding landscape.

For 2018, we are offering a variety of services and products like previous seasons. Like last season, offerings are limited availability as Mel has started grad school and will be participating in a few research projects. This year, Mark will be handling package bee...

I'll be conducting an introductory queen breeding and rearing workshop with Aiden Wing of Wingsofnaturebees.com again this spring. The one day class will take place March 11, 2018 in Los Altos Hills, CA on the Bay Peninsula Preserve in the Santa Cruz coastal...

Quality through the Seasons

It is our goal and promise to provide you with the highest quality Survivor Queenbees available—Honeybees chosen by Beekeepers for Beekeepers. We are committed to conscientious beekeeping, From the shores of Lake Superior to the banks of the Rio Grande.
We ensure this by practicing sustainable beekeeping management techniques. We encourage healthy and considerate queen mating by allowing our queens to mature for an extended period of time (21-24 days minimum) in a larger mating nuc than most queen producers do. By doing this, we can verify our queens full brood pattern instead of just a few eggs. Saturating mountainous pockets with diverse survivor drone stock also promotes genetic cross-stocking. Well fecundated (mated) queenbees that have mated with a multitude of drones from a diverse pool (queenbee promiscuity) are found to be more attractive to their worker bees. Research evidence shows that having colonies with various sister and sub-sister families promotes an overlapping network of hive health and pest/pathogen resistance. Our conscientious protocols of extra time, space, and ample saturation of diverse genetic strains, guarantees that the Survivor Queenbees you receive from us are well-mated, proven layers with solid brood patterns and desirable genetic traits.